Piano improvisation

Do you need a fun Valentine’s activity to do with your piano students? These cards are just the ticket. > The idea of these fun candy cards is not just to give you a way to celebrate Valentine’s day in your studio. These are much more than that. Each card has an expression mark, tempo…

Beginning improvisation usually works best with an accompanist. This helps the music to sound fuller, and allows students to explore the melodies more freely. In my piano students’ buddy time, I’ve been trying out some modified versions of the improvisation patterns from Create First by Forrest Kinney. In last week’s quick clip, you saw how…

As an experiment during our overlapping piano buddy time, I’ve been simplifying some of the improvisation accompaniments from Create First by Forrest Kinney. This has worked out really, really well and it’s quite easy to adapt for any student level. In this video, you’ll see the bare bones arrangement of ‘For the Joy’ that I’ve…

A buddy piano lesson is what I call it when two students’ lesson times overlap in the middle, so that they get some time one on one, and some time together. The specific durations of each segment are up to each teacher. In my studio I give two options: 40 minute buddy lessons: 20 minutes…

There are certain times of the year when practice is likely to be lagging. This is especially common just after a recital – and/or just before a teaching break. So, what can you do in these no practice piano lessons? Are you just going to tell your student that they should practice, and review all…

Technique and sight reading are two of the most essential skills that we need to pass on to our piano students. I’m constantly in search of new methods, resources and ideas to teach these key concepts. In this post, I’m sharing my favourite technique and sight reading resources for piano teachers. From all the things I’ve tried…

Transfer students are tougher than students that you teach from the very beginning, and I see a lot of questions from piano teachers about students that come to them from another teacher. There are many reasons for this, but they all boil down to one thing: you don’t know what they have and haven’t been…

I think the clue to why I think improvisation is the route to success is in the name…melodic minor scales. Am I right? What are scales for if not for creating melodies? If your answer was for teaching discipline, then you should probably hop off here. Nothing wrong with discipline but that’s not the primary…

I know, I know. You went to a piano conference and you heard beautiful music? Isn’t that painfully expected? What I’m talking about here is not the music I heard, but the focus of each of the teachers. No matter what they were teaching – five finger pieces or Gershwin – they were each focussed on…

One of the joys of the NCKP is the amount of teaching demonstrations they include in the schedule. This is awesome for many reasons, but most particularly for me because it means hearing the actual language the teachers use with their students. Repertoire selections, exercise choices, and teaching strategies are all well and good; but…

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About Nicola

Nicola has been teaching piano since 2005 and runs a creative piano teaching studio in Dublin, Ireland. Nicola believes in music lessons that motivate and inspire, and shares some of her ideas for vibrant piano lessons on the Colourful Keys blog.

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